A Game is Fine Too
by gsteemso
Summary: Ranma wakes up in a very, very unexpected position. How the heck did WINNING a fight lead to THIS? Ryoga can’t believe it either.
1. Chapter One

**A Game Is Fine Too**

A Somewhat Citrus-Flavoured Ranma ½ Fan Fiction  
© 2008–10 by gsteemso

Chapter One

Not my characters. Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko.

Author's Note (Sat. 2008/07/05): Despite appearances, Ranma will not actually be **paired**, in the romantic sense, with anyone male in this fic. However, s/he is uniquely qualified to, shall we say, enjoy life to its fullest. Given a suitable nudge, why not?

* * *

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* * *

Saotome Ranma, looking somewhat dishevelled, paused to recover his breath atop a small convenience store. In the street before him, his most evenly matched sparring partner — one Hibiki Ryoga — was sitting up with a wince from the crater he'd just made in the asphalt. Unexpectedly, considering Ryoga's almost supernaturally flawed sense of direction, he was looking straight at Ranma.

Ryoga scratched his head and stood up with a rueful grin. "Guess I should have practised that one a bit more before trying it on you, huh?"

Ranma hopped down to sidewalk level. "Well, I think it might have actually gotten me if your sandal strap hadn't come undone and tangled up your feet," he said generously. The two boys had been engaged in a running martial arts battle across most of the suburb, which was nothing unusual for them. What was unusual — indeed, unprecedented — was that they hadn't had their match cut short by anything, and had actually succeeded in tiring one another out through natural attrition. Normally Ryoga would get hopelessly lost only a few minutes after the fight began, or else the battle would be coöpted by some other martially obsessed lunatic.

In any case, the improbable event had taken place, and the two boys were in such a mellow mood after beating on one another uninterrupted for the better part of three hours that they were feeling unwontedly well-disposed to one another. All of the petty stresses that normally caused them to think ill of one another had faded temporarily to the background.

"Man, that was a good fight," Ranma said expansively as the two turned to start walking back to the Furinkan district, where Ranma was staying with the Tendo family. Behind them, unnoticed, the owner of the convenience store flipped them the bird and glared at the Ranma-shaped hole through his shop's rooftop sign.

"You said it, buddy," agreed Ryoga. He was about to continue with the observation that some food and drink would be a good idea, when he narrowly escaped being splashed by a bucket of cold water that had been upended on Ranma.

"Hey!" the now-girl protested, looking up for her assailant. She didn't have to look far; the supremely unwelcome little form of her martial arts school's perverted grandmaster, Happosai, was plummeting on a direct course from the rooftops to her bosom, holding out a lacy set of lingerie that he was obviously intent on getting her into. "Gah! You old freak!" Tired though she was, she was still on an adrenaline high from the fight and easily nailed the old lech between the eyes with a textbook-perfect punch, bouncing him off the brick wall beside them.

"Ow! Is that any way to treat someone who brings you a present?" snarled the pervert, waving the lingerie indignantly.

"In your case, YES," growled the dripping redhead. They weren't the only annoyed ones present, though, as they were abruptly reminded.

"You senile old goat!" Ryoga growled, snatching the lacy edge of the bra before Happosai could react, and swinging him around. "Try THIS on!" With an invisible flare of directed chi, the lingerie suddenly _stretched,_ bouncing Happosai off the brickwork again as the pair of combatants rotated. Ranma, also taken by surprise, barely dodged them.

"Wha—?" managed Happosai, just before he was rudely interrupted at the bottom end of his orbit by the underwear suddenly snapping back into shape with a loud _crack._ The laws of physics obligingly resumed operation after Ryoga's prized new Rubber Cloth technique ended, propelling the startled grandmaster at high speed by air delivery into the next ward eastwards. A flock of birds took flight in alarm as the screaming projectile sped past a big tree a few streets over.

Ryoga's triumphant pose — not, alas, a thing he got to use very often — was cut tragically short by his _other_ sandal strap unfurling itself from his leg and tying his feet together, causing him to topple over sideways.

"Huh. That happened last time too. Wonder what you're doing wrong?" observed Ranma, helping Ryoga up.

A passing little old lady crossed the street to avoid them. "Beating up senior citizens and her boyfriend lying around in the street… scandalous!" she muttered. "Young people today!"

They didn't hear her. "Darned if I know. Must be something to do with the opponent's chi; it never did that when I was practising."

"Some sort of chi-echo effect… Hmmm," mused Ranma.

"Meh, I'll figure it out later," decided Ryoga. "For now, I think I could do with a cold one and some food."

"Huh? A cold one of what?"

"Don't care as long as it's cold."

Ranma laughed. She was about to agree with him, when her gaze fell on the establishment immediately behind the Lost Boy, on the other side of the street. "Huh. How 'bout that place?" she asked, pointing.

"Ichiro's All-You-Can-Eat? Wow, I never even knew that was there." The two went in and waited patiently to be seated.

The proprietor looked askance at their age, and surreptitiously compared their faces to the standard "Bingo Sheet" distributed every few months by the Nerima Merchants' Association. He paled as he realized just who had walked in, and tried not to look apprehensive. According to the rather lengthy footnote, the girl seemed especially destructive during her infrequent dates, but the damage could sometimes be averted by hiding the couple out of view of passersby in the street, as well as refusing to admit any troublemakers who appeared to be following her.

"Right this way!" he urged them, with a disturbingly artificial smile. He seated them in a cosy candlelit booth right at the back — which suited the "couple" just fine; no sense risking a crazy challenger noticing them when they were trying to unwind, after all — and brought them some complimentary iced tea with their menus, before retiring with unseemly haste.

Ranma watched him go with a puzzled expression. "Did that guy look a bit jumpy to you?" she asked Ryoga in hushed tones, not wanting to make a scene. Then she noticed that the tea was iced and scowled. It would have been nice to change back to eat. _Oh well, there's always the washroom sink while we're waiting around after ordering._

"He's probably just one of those nervous types. I meet a lot of them for some reason."

Ranma shrugged and they both eagerly downed the tea before turning to their menus. It was surprisingly tasty, and very refreshing.

In the background, the proprietor looked relieved. The young couple appeared to be peacefully enjoying their date, and the industrial-strength mood stabilizers he'd stirred into their tea should be kicking in any minute. _And to think I didn't believe Mother when she insisted I take precautions before opening a location in Nerima! That reminds me, I'd better hide the cigarettes and get out my long underwear — she's visiting on Monday._ He looked mildly worried at the idea, then smiled down at the little glass vial in his hand as his thoughts returned to the present. He read once more to himself the label:

RYŪGENZAWA BRAND  
**Dried Sloth Pills**  
_Guaranteed safe with all drinks!_

Unfortunately, he failed to note the fine print warning of severe interactions with mythical curses — which was perhaps understandable, as it was in very small boustrophedon Ogham around the edge of the label and looked like mere decoration. On the other hand, he'd not likely have believed it in any case.

* * *

Ranma swam slowly out of the depths of sleep. He rapidly became aware he had a splitting headache, which occupied his whole attention for several moments. After a while certain other sensations oozed to the fore. He… no, he amended, _she…_ felt all sticky, and a bit on the cool side, not that that really mattered to a well-conditioned martial artist. Apparently she'd fallen asleep without a blanket… Or nightclothes. Huh? _Wait a moment…_

Who was she lying cuddled up next to, to the extent of having her limbs intertwined with theirs⁈

She tried to open her sleep-crusted eyes, and was promptly foiled by the cruelly bright morning sunlight. "Ow!"

She tried again more slowly, and after a while managed to make out the inside of a vaguely familiar room stretching out above her. Apparently she was lying on a large throw rug on the floor. _Where the heck?_ She awkwardly rolled her head to the left and was greeted by the sight of an equally sticky Hibiki Ryoga, wearing his signature bandannas and nothing else, protruding from underneath her. _Oh. Right. I'm in the Lost Goofball's living room._ She blinked, and rewound a moment. _Why is Ryoga naked? Wait a sec. I'm naked too! Talk about embarrassing._ Her thoughts squirrel-caged around in wobbly circles for a bit, failing to connect the dots.

A groan from the insensate Ryoga distracted her after a minute or so. "Wha?" he mumbled, sounding like he really needed a drink of water.

"Um. 'Morning," croaked Ranma tentatively. Whatever had happened to the two of them must have been pretty extreme to knock them both out like this. She couldn't even begin to guess why they were all tangled up with each other, though it did at least ward off some of the chill of the morning. And why were they both so sticky?

After a couple of false starts, Ryoga managed to answer her with, "G'morning. Um, what happened last night?" The two of them dragged themselves into a much less entwined sitting position, looking blearily around at the scattered wet clothing they must have discarded on arriving here.

"Weird," muttered Ranma, looking at the tangled clothes in their half-dried puddles of stale rainwater. _What DID happen last night?_ "Uh… last I remember, we were fighting Happosai, and… We went for a snack, didn't we?" It was oddly hard to focus.

"Yeah, I think so," agreed Ryoga. "Can't remember much after that, just that we were in a good mood. Then it goes all foggy."

"Sheesh, we musta wore each other out way worse than it felt like!" concluded Ranma. "We musta been so fried we just peeled off our wet clothes and fell asleep on the spot once we got here."

Ryoga suddenly froze, looking down at Ranma's lap across from his. "Um. I dunno how to say this, but I don't think that's all we did…" he squeaked nervously.

"Huh?" She followed his gaze with her own, and — "Eww! What is that slimy white stuff all over my crotch?" She was too baffled to be really grossed out just yet, though she could tell that state of mind was approaching.

"Er… I think it's from, um, me," confessed Ryoga with sickly horror. This couldn't be happening! His mind shied away from the enormity of the realization.

Likewise, it took Ranma several minutes to process the possibility. Oddly, neither of them got defensive or angry, as one might normally have expected of them. The truth of their apparent actions the previous night was so inconceivable to them both that their minds slid off and around it rather than absorbing it. "I think… I really need a shower," she finally stumbled out, having gotten nowhere.

"Yeah, and a good soak in the furo," agreed Ryoga distractedly.

The two of them climbed awkwardly up one another until they were both standing, ignoring — with astonishing determination — the pleasurable tingles they got from being touched by one another, and staggered off in search of a bathroom. For some reason, they both started out with really wobbly legs.

* * *

The second time they ended up back in the living room, Ranma quietly took over leading the way.

* * *

"Ooogh, does it ever feel good to get clean," mumbled Ranma from the wash stool she was perched on, scrubbing her left leg industriously.

"Tell me about it," agreed Ryoga from his own stool, reaching for the back brush in the corner so he could wash the area between his shoulder blades properly. He was rather nonplussed when the business end fell off as soon as it touched his skin. "The heck?" he asked, staring at the disintegrated remains on the floor.

"Huh," blinked Ranma in consternation. "Musta dried up from not being used while your parents were… out." She diplomatically refrained from mentioning that they must have been lost for quite a while this time for such a thing to happen.

"Guess so," agreed Ryoga glumly, not having any better ideas. "Anyway, would you mind…?" He gestured vaguely with the washcloth in his hand.

"OK, but you gotta help me too afterward," agreed Ranma. She normally would have vehemently rejected any suggestion that she could use a hand with something so basic, as indeed would Ryoga, but whatever it was they couldn't remember doing the previous evening — combined with a night spent uncovered on the floor — had left them both rather stiff and sore. She turned to face his back and got busy with the washrag and soap.

After a few moments' work, she pronounced his back as clean as she felt like getting it, and they turned around so he could return the favour. Ryoga began to run the soapy cloth over her right shoulder blade, and paused in surprise. "Where did you get these funny marks, Ranma?" he asked.

"What marks?"

"These dings and bruises on your neck and shoulder. See?"

Ranma got up with a stifled groan and looked at herself in the mirror.

"Weird. Almost looks like I got bit by something, but they're not very deep except for the fang marks," she said, looking up a bit at Ryoga's reflection behind her own. His mouth was hanging open slightly in surprise, revealing—

_Oh HELL no._

"Um, Ryoga?" she said, entirely too calmly. "Why does it look like YOUR fang marks?"

Ryoga blinked in astonishment and shut his mouth. Now that she mentioned it, when he looked at her reflection from the front, the bruises and the tiny indentations bracketing each one looked suspiciously familiar. There appeared to be more bruises — this time without the fang marks — all over her breasts, too. He swallowed heavily, assailed by a sudden ghastly mental image of Ranma's male form in the same pose. "I… left… _hickies?…_ all over… _RANMA?"_ With difficulty, he managed not to throw up, and then was blindsided by a fuzzy and totally unexpected memory from the depths of the previous night's debauchery.

_—he moved his head down between her inverted calves, leaning in towards her graceful neck as she threw her own head back and cried his name in rapture. As she dug her fingertips into his shoulders, he bit down, marking her as his own as he pushed ever deeper into her—_

Ryoga's mind overloaded from trying to process diametrically opposing mental states, and he collapsed like a solid stone puppet with its strings cut, catching his jaw a nasty crack on the counter on the way down. It left a dent… in the countertop. His jaw, of course, was unharmed.

"Huh. Hickies from another guy are pretty gross, but I didn't think it was THAT disturbing," mumbled Ranma in bewilderment. She grudgingly prodded the limp form with her foot until he was lying a bit less awkwardly, then returned to her ablutions. After some more scrubbing, she walked over and turned the shower on herself, sighing with pleasure as she reverted to male form. "Aaah, what a relief! Huh?"

Ranma looked down, and was astonished to see heavy flows of whitish goop oozing down the inside of his legs, mixed with a fair few dark red flecks of blood. "Oh man." Not even he could ignore evidence like this. He'd actually done… THAT. Not only that, he'd done it BACKWARDS. With another GUY.

Ranma fell to his knees in shock. Oddly, his desire to retch wasn't strong enough to make him actually do so, but he still felt pretty ill. He sat there stunned for a few minutes, and eventually reached a conclusion. "That… _never happened._ Yeah, that's the ticket." He determinedly put from his mind the pleasurable echoes of sensation from his other form's now-absent genitalia, and scrubbed himself vigorously until all traces of the night's exertions had gone, apart from the rapidly fading hickies.

After a while, Ryoga woke up again. He blinked in shock at the horrible sight of a male Ranma with his, Ryoga's, bite marks all over him, and determinedly blanked his mind as he finished cleaning up. Neither of them spoke as they ran Ranma's clothes through the dryer and got dressed for the day, until Ranma finally ventured an innocuous comment over breakfast. It was with no small sense of relief that they finally went their separate ways — Ryoga getting himself lost with a vague idea of finding his girlfriend Unryū Akari's family pig farm, where he knew he would always be welcome; and Ranma heading off to school in Furinkan district, with hopes of being only somewhat late.

* * *

Ryoga wandered dazedly across the landscape just beyond Tokyo's sprawl. He didn't know it, but his meandering had switched directions back and forth several times already, between patterns that would eventually lead him to Akari and patterns that would eventually lead him to Ranma. This wasn't unusual, except for the part where he was thinking _positive_ thoughts about his perennial rival rather than homicidal ones.

Ryoga was, bluntly, in a highly unstable state of near-shock at his actions the night before. _I had SEX — with RANMA, of all people?_ "Bleaargh!" he cried out, disgusted, causing passersby to give him funny looks. The thing was, as the possessor of a Jusenkyo curse himself, Ryoga had always viewed Ranma as male, even when technically engaged in ogling the guy's girl form. The thought of having lost his virginity to his most hated rival was truly nauseating. "Ranma, this's all your fault," he muttered quietly, without much force.

The flip side of the situation, Ryoga was uncomfortably aware, was that she looked really cute when she was gasping joyously in the throes of… of… He twitched and stumbled in his relentless striding. Feeling his face start to burn, he ducked his head, certain that everyone nearby was staring at him.

The thing was, it was hard to be angry with someone who'd made you feel so good. Ryoga was finding it harder and harder not to feel all warm and fuzzy whenever he thought of the girl… who was really a boy…

"Dammit!" he shouted in frustration. _I know he's really my friend, but who ever heard of "rivals with benefits"?_ He paused in his endless striding for a moment, blindsided once again by a truly intense memory of the night before. _On the other hand, the idea does have its good points,_ he conceded reluctantly, thinking wistfully of Ranma's girl body's perky pink nipples beneath his hands.

By the end of the day, some 16 hours after he'd set out, he'd covered almost 150 km of ground, though he'd actually travelled less than a seventh of that measured along a straight line. He had to admit he was becoming almost happy with the thought of having had sex, even if it did have to have been with Ranma; in fact, he was actually finding it quite difficult not to wish for a repeat occurrence. "I must be nuts," he muttered to himself as he began to set up his camp for the night, "but damned if I don't think she's sexy as hell." He wanted to wash his brain out with soap.

* * *

Ranma, meanwhile, had arrived at school just in time to be drained by his chi-vampire of a homeroom teacher, Miss Hinako, as she left for her next class of the day. "Thanks, Saotome-kun!" she sang as she skipped out the door, her suddenly adult form causing all sorts of interesting motions in her now far too small dress. He supposed it was a fair trade, especially considering that he didn't feel—

Ranma looked down at himself in surprise. Apparently he was so energized after having sex for several hours straight the night before that he was still in fairly good shape after having huge amounts of chi sucked out of his aura. Go figure.

He sat down at his desk, looking rather distant and thoughtful. The class was instantly alerted to potential mayhem on the horizon, as the mystery of his whereabouts overnight quickly took a back seat to the mystery of who his latest challenger was. After all, the only other times anyone had seen him so distracted and imperturbable, he'd been hard at work on various new techniques. What else would it be now?

Ranma, of course, knew exactly why he was so distracted, and had absolutely no intention of letting anyone else figure it out. He eagerly seized the excuse that had been dropped into his lap and ran with it, muttering to himself about what could possibly be going wrong with his pig-cursed rival's Rubber Cloth technique whenever someone showed a bit too much interest.

All three of Ranma's fiancées were in his class these days, to his everlasting annoyance. He figured he owed someone a good pounding, as payment for whoever-it-was having opened Cologne's eyes to the benefits to her heir of a formal education.

Be that as it may, ever since the new school year had started, the three girls had been engaged in the iciest of cold wars, with himself stuck miserably in the middle. About the only bright spots were that Tendo Nabiki and Kuno Tatewaki had graduated the previous year, though he lived in the same house as the former, and unfortunately still sometimes encountered either or both around the town.

Today the three fiancées were watching him as closely as they felt they could get away with. None of them wanted to distract him from his martial arts theorizing just yet, so they kept their distance and watched one another like hawks. This lasted up until the period after lunch, when the class headed out for their gym lesson.

Ranma's crash course in physical intimacy had left him acutely aware of everyone around him on a sexual level. He fervently avoided — to the extent of changing to his gym outfit in a stall in the restroom instead of using the change room — thinking too closely about the boys of the class, fearing unwelcome self-discoveries, but the girls of the class occupied his full attention whenever they passed in front of his eyes. This was only enhanced by the ludicrously tiny shorts they wore in gym. He found it very reassuring that he still found girls attractive; now if only he didn't have that looming dread that he might start feeling attracted to other boys as well—

_Aargh, aargh, aargh,_ he winced, _I really didn't want to think about that!_ It was too late, though. He had a sudden flashback to the exquisite feeling of Ryoga's manhood sliding smoothly into his girl side's feminine organs, and shuddered. Then he noticed something that made him feel a lot better — he'd enjoyed the sex, yes, but he didn't actually feel attracted to Ryoga at all, even in the depths of shared passion. The whole experience fit into Ranma's mental files more under the category of "masturbation" than anything else. There wasn't a lot else in there, either, because he so seldom got any safe time to himself. He wasn't sure how to feel about these memories' relative prominence.

It also, he realized, seemed to belong under the dusty and underused heading of "fun with friends." Ranma had even fewer memories that belonged to _that_ semi-atrophied classification, and up until this incident had treasured every single one of them. He felt horribly conflicted as a result, and turned to girl-watching with a vengeance to get his mind off the whole business.

Unfortunately, that was where the fiancées had clued in that things were not quite as they seemed. The first to approach him reprovingly was, of course, Tendo Akane. The two teens and their respective families lived together at the Tendo dojo, and Ranma loved her best out of his three prospective wives, but she did have a regrettably strong shrewish streak. These days she was a lot politer about rebuking him, but only until she was reasonably certain of his having transgressed. "Ranma," she began with one eyebrow twitching, "Were you just checking out Miyuki's butt?"

Ranma froze like a deer caught in headlights. "Uh… was I? Sorry, didn't realize," he ad-libbed desperately. It was sort of accurate; he'd been appreciating the girl's curves, true, but mainly he'd been deep in thought about his endangered gender identity.

The tiny margin of truthfulness gave him a much better poker face than usual — which is to say, he looked surprised rather than guilty — so Akane only frowned at him and warned, "Well, DON'T! That idiot Kuno might have graduated last year, but we don't need anyone replacing him as the Chief Pervert here."

Ranma had to agree. "Well, yeah, kinda obvious ain't it?"

Akane gave him a frosty look. "Wouldn't be the first time I needed to remind you of something obvious."

"Okay, okay. Sheesh, try to flirt free food out of ONE guy without remembering to go girl first and you hear about it forever, honestly." _At least the guy turned out to be gay so I still got my octopus balls,_ he consoled himself.

Mollified, Akane returned to the girls' side of the sports field and resumed waiting her turn to be at bat. Kuonji Ukyo and the Chinese Amazon, Shampoo, who were Ranma's other two candidates for official ball and chain, took advantage to issue their own warnings, which Ranma ignored with a lasting glower. He still hadn't forgiven the two for throwing exploding food around in public a few months previously, during the fiasco when his and Akane's fathers had tried to forcibly get the pair married.

"I guess we can talk later, eh, Ranchan?" said Ukyo to save face. She withdrew as quickly as she could without appearing to have been run off.

"Husband no need look at flat-chested Japan girls when have too-too sexy Amazon wife to meet man needs! We go have honeymoon this weekend, yes?" bubbled Shampoo. "You see what you missing all this time!" she added with a grin and a shimmy.

Ranma grimaced. Today, with his libido running much higher than usual, he found himself especially resentful of Shampoo's advances. Not even he could miss the fact that, even after all the time she had had to learn about him, she still thought he could be led around by the testicles if she acted sexy enough in front of him. He resented that even more than usual after the damage the previous night's exertions had caused to his sense of self.

Ever since he'd been cursed to look like such a beautiful girl, Ranma had had a secret horror of getting stuck as some guy's girly sex toy. He felt somewhat like he'd placed _himself_ in such a position with Ryoga, and now Shampoo wanted to do essentially the same thing to his male side, his innermost bastion of self? It was intolerable!

He laid her out unconscious in a single untelegraphed blow. In spite of all the danger signs, she had in her arrogance not expected him to be anywhere near so angry, and went down like a dynamited tree. There was a shocked pause as the entire class STARED.

"SAOTOME!" roared the teacher, hurrying over and gesturing for a bunch of the other girls to follow him.

The squad of intimidated girls carted Shampoo off to the nurse's office, and the teacher demanded an explanation — which Ranma declined to give, saying it was a personal matter and that she had insulted him horribly.

Even as the teacher chewed him out and gave him three weeks' detention, Ranma found himself feeling a lot better; there's always something satisfying about striking back at an aggressor, even if it wasn't done in a totally socially acceptable manner. He wasn't terribly surprised at the punishment, which wasn't as uncharacteristic for Furinkan as it sounded — most of what the staff turned a blind eye to happened outside of class.

Akane and Ukyo could only look on in shock. Ranma didn't have a problem hitting anyone who deserved it, but he always needed a pretty good reason to do so. They couldn't imagine what Shampoo might have done to get him so uncharacteristically angry.

* * *

After Ranma's detention that afternoon, he left the school by a different door than usual and went for a walk. This had the unfortunate side effect of making Akane miss meeting him where she'd waited outside the main entrance; she was quite worried about him, and hoped he would talk to her. It worked sometimes, after all. After waiting a further half hour, she gave up and went home, wondering how she'd missed him and fretting anxiously over what could be bothering him.

Ranma, meanwhile, meandered absently around the canal network that crossed the route home to the Tendos'. He had a lot to think about, and the lines he'd had to write during his detention ("I must not hit people during class, no matter how much they insult me") didn't figure in the subject matter at all.

After he'd realized that he still wasn't attracted to other boys, Ranma had calmed down a lot. As he recalled more and more of the energetic goings-on he'd participated in the previous evening on Ryoga's living room floor, which seemed in hindsight to have gone on for several pleasure-hazed hours before any actual intercourse took place, he had to admit that it would have been absolutely wonderful with a better choice of partner. Akane, for example… but, no, she was seriously freaked out by any and all things that led in that direction. Ranma shuddered to imagine her reaction the next morning if she were ever to do That without intending to in advance. Quite apart from the likely gruesome fate of her luckless partner, she'd quite possibly do herself a fatal injury while trying to drive out the perversion with the nearest blunt object.

Ranma frowned. " 'Without intending to…' " he muttered thoughtfully. There was something fishy about this whole business. He would have been prepared to swear on his life that he would never have willingly slept with another male, yet he'd done just that! As far as he could remember, neither he nor Ryoga had stopped to observe that something was a bit odd about them even admitting to mutual attraction, let alone acting on the feeling. They'd just… been aware of a warm presence and that rubbing up against it felt nice. It was like they were blind drunk, or something. Odd.

Temporarily shelving the problem, Ranma considered his other fiancées. Alas, he realized, if he'd done The Deed with any of them, they'd probably try to rub it in the others' faces, precipitating a fight resembling World War III in scope and intensity. Similarly dire results would probably follow intimacy with ANY girl, as the fiancés responded to the "threat." It just wasn't fair!

"Gah!" he spat, horribly frustrated. "I gotta do something about that!"

It was just too bad that he had no idea what _could_ be done about it.

It occurred to him ironically that even if he were so inclined as to seek out a male partner, which — even in light of the fact that he already HAD once — seemed about as likely as finding bicycles growing on a tree, the only one who wasn't likely to boast of the conquest afterwards was the same one he'd already had relations with. "I have to think of that as a lucky break, now? Ugh, my life really _sucks,"_ he groused as he walked along.

* * *

Following school, Ukyo had returned to her restaurant as per usual, but was worried. If Ranma was finally starting to notice girls but he was still pissed at her for the Exploding Wedding fiasco, she was at a serious disadvantage in the fiancée wars. She dithered for a while, and finally decided that she needed further information before it would become clear what to do next. Nodding decisively, she summoned her only employee, the genius ninja-girl Konatsu, who cheerfully went about her life under the slight inconvenience of actually being a boy.

"What can I do for you, Ukyo-sama?" the humble pseudo-girl asked politely, with a deferential bow. Ukyo had, after much effort, broken Konatsu's habit of prostrating herself whenever she asked for orders.

"Well, I'm worried about Ranchan… I, well, he's still mad at everybody from that stupid wedding. He actually knocked Shampoo out in one punch during gym class today! The thing is, he seems to actually be starting to notice girls, just when he isn't speaking to his cute fiancée! I'm worried he might do something he'll regret. I know it's a lot to ask — he's almost as good as you are at noticing watchers — but could you please go and discreetly keep an eye on him?"

Konatsu raised one delicate eyebrow. If she were honest with herself, this sounded like a disaster waiting to happen, but she could refuse Ukyo nothing — she loved the crossdressing okonomiyaki chef with all her heart. "I will do my best, Ukyo-sama," she promised gravely, "but is there anything else I need to know?"

"Hmmm… No, I think that's everything. Or, no… He was all distracted during class today, like when he's got a new challenger, but no one knows what's going on. He kept muttering about a new technique of Ryoga's, for some reason. Maybe he's promised to help Ryoga win a challenge?" Ukyo looked distant for a moment as she pondered the mystery.

"Huh. Strange. Well, I'll get started right away. Will you be all right for the afternoon rush, Mistress?"

"Sure thing, sugar. Stay safe, OK?"

With another bow by way of reply, Konatsu went upstairs and left via the roof. Finding someone as memorable as Ranma wasn't too hard when the girl-cursed boy wasn't trying to hide, at least not to someone of Konatsu's skills, and she quickly tracked him to a dry canal several blocks away.

He appeared to be upset about something, from what she could glean from his body language. She was wondering what he was wandering around for, and pondering methods of finding out without letting him know of her attention, when he suddenly snapped to alertness and looked straight at her. "You can come out now," he grated sourly.

_Oops. Busted,_ she thought guiltily. _I'm sorry, Ukyo-sama._ She dropped her stealth technique, and hopped down to join him in the canal bed from where she'd been lurking in the shadow of a telephone pole on the bank. "Hello, Ranma-sama."

Ranma's expression relaxed a bit. "Oh, it's you, 'Natsu-chan," he said, noticeably less aggressively. "What's up?"

Konatsu paused briefly, trying inexpertly to think of a way to explain herself without getting Ranma angrier with anyone. When she'd come to stay with Ukyo, it had required her to retrain a great number of her habits; having a mistress who she actually wished to support made a great deal of difference in how she should act when being questioned. "Uh, well, mistress Ukyo was… worried about you, and asked me to keep an eye out for you while you were… distracted," she said hopefully. With any luck the pauses while she sought for words wouldn't be too noticeable.

Ranma's expression grew grimmer at the mention of Ukyo, but however upset he was, he couldn't bring himself to be angry with the luckless kunoichi before him. The worst she had done at that stupid wedding was sneak around trying ineffectually to be helpful, and she quite obviously looked up to him. "Well, I got a lot on my mind today, but I'm not a total basket case," he said in an unsuccessful attempt to lighten the mood. "Thanks, but I think I can take it from here."

Konatsu looked at him searchingly. He didn't appear very well rested, at least compared to his usual state — of course, compared to normal people, he was still ridiculously fit. "Would talking to someone help, Ranma-sama?" she asked deferentially. "I think we have a lot in common, after all, and I can see something is really bothering you."

Ranma started to reflexively decline, but something stopped him at the last moment. His brow furrowed, and he thought, _If anyone understands having backwards "parts," it's this poor schmuck. But how do I know he, uh, she, wouldn't tell Ukyo? She does anything she says!_ Finally, he decided to just gloss over the embarrassing parts. That wouldn't leave much, but maybe it wouldn't need to. "Well, I guess it couldn't hurt, but I want your word of honour no one will learn about this from you," he agreed reluctantly, eyeing Konatsu with a piercing gaze.

The ninja drew herself up. This sounded serious. "On my life, Ranma-sama," she promised solemnly.

"Even if Ukyo asks?" Ranma's face was like stone.

_He didn't call her "Ucchan,"_ she thought with a twinge of alarm, mingled with a surge of selfish hope that she tried guiltily to suppress. If Ranma didn't want Ukyo-sama that meant she was available for Konatsu, right? Still, that was beside the point. "You never told anyone about what I said when you helped me that day in gym class," she whispered. "I can do no less."

Ranma paused, taken aback. What—?

Oh, THAT.

_Halfway through last class on a Thursday, a few days after Konatsu had arrived in town, Ranma reëntered the change rooms at Furinkan high. He was surprised to find a distraught Konatsu huddled miserably on a bench in the corner._

_The genius kunoichi was managing to test out of all her courses, but while that was going on she was expected to attend classes like all the other local teenagers bar Ryoga. That included gym — but Konatsu was, to say the least, uncomfortable changing in the change room that matched her physical gender._

_Ranma had just completed all the gymnastics exercises, with a perfect score, in about a tenth of the allotted time. However, after he got in a loud argument with Akane, the exasperated coach had sent him home early with a disgruntled note to Ranma's father. Ranma thought this rather a low blow, but was shaken from his funk when he saw Konatsu's expression of sheer misery and self-loathing. "Konatsu?" he asked in surprise. "What's wrong? Are you in our gym class now?" She was in 3-A for academic courses, being a much better student than Ranma had ever managed; he and all his other associates were in 3-E._

_Konatsu turned her face up towards him with a stricken expression. He was shocked to realize she was crying. "Ranma-sama…" she whispered._

_Ranma twitched and tried to prevent his hair from standing on end. He'd been thinking of Konatsu as a rather strange boy ever since her masculine chest had been revealed, but at the moment she looked for all the world like a very feminine girl who'd just been cruelly dumped by her boyfriend. Ranma was more than a bit creeped out, but he thought of Konatsu as a friend, if a very strange one, and he just couldn't walk away from such misery, even if he was highly ill-equipped to deal with it. "What's wrong? he asked again, more gently, and gingerly sat down near her on the bench._

_"I… I…" Konatsu broke down sobbing again, shrinking even further into herself. "Y-yes, Ranma-sama, they assigned me to your gym class because it's where all the other martial artists are… but they're making me use the wrong change room! Except it's technically not, I guess, but I'm a GIRL even if they don't want me to be…" Her words grew unintelligible under the tears._

_Ranma was shaken to his foundation at this admission — but then he thought of how much he hated being a girl while surrounded by lecherous males in the change room, and couldn't help but feel moved at her plight. Since he had to participate in swimming lessons as a girl, he'd only just escaped being forced to use the wrong change room himself, and honestly, using the right one wasn't really an improvement. He reached out towards the huddled wreck in front of him, but hesitated. Touching a high-level martial artist unexpectedly while said martial artist was highly overwrought was a good way to lose a hand._

_His dilemma was resolved when she noticed the abortive motion and gave him a tremulous smile. "You… you don't think I'm a freak?" she whispered with a desperate hope that tore at Ranma's heart._

_"Nah," he said expansively, clapping a hand to her shoulder reassuringly. "Think about who you're talkin' to! They nearly did the same thing to me. Stupid swimming lessons…" With a grimace, he trailed off into indecipherable muttering._

_Konatsu gave a firmer smile. "I guess you'd understand if anyone would," she agreed shyly. "I used to envy you your change, but I guess things aren't very good that way either, are they?"_

_Ranma gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and let go again with a calming smile. "At least you don't have to wonder what shape you'll be in five minutes," he agreed._

_She winced. "I guess… but is being half the right thing and half the wrong thing not technically an improvement over ALWAYS being the wrong one?"_

_Ranma had to admit that one had him stumped. He'd never thought about it before. He said as much, but continued before she could respond: "The thing is, being in the wrong change room is mostly embarrassing because of people ogling you when you don't want 'em to, right? And you're a lebbi— lesmi— you like other girls, so if you were in the girls' change room they'd feel like that about you, right?" He waited for her downcast nod. "Well, see, that's where you're ahead of the game! See, normally a girl who likes other girls would be happier changing with the guys coz it would take the lust out of it — but since she's got the kind of body the GUYS all lust after, she can't, right? Well, you CAN."_

_Konatsu looked cross-eyed at this bit of contorted logic. "But—" she protested._

_"I know it's not that simple because the guys will tease you about bein' a crossdresser, but you're forgettin' you got me here to stick up for you!" Ranma said encouragingly._

_Konatsu looked starstruck. "You'd stick up for me?" she asked in hushed surprise._

_"Sure! You're my friend, right?"_

Ranma's resolve had been rather tested when he found out Konatsu's gym wear consisted of the extremely small and tight shorts that were the female gym uniform, but he supposed in hindsight it made sense. His eyes still watered just thinking about it though.

As it transpired, Konatsu had been required to sit out gym that class as punishment for being late, so once again was able to change with only Ranma being the wiser. It further turned out to have been her last gym class as well as her first, because the paperwork for her to skip the year's schooling had finally gone through shortly afterwards. Ranma had soon forgotten the incident amidst the unending stream of weirdness that was his everyday life, but apparently it had meant a lot more to the gender-confused ninja.

"Uh, yeah," he agreed nervously. When she put it like that, he really HAD to trust her, at least in her eyes.

Still…

"Well," he started, "somethin' really awful happened last night, 'Natsu-chan. I hardly know how to tell you… See, I wore myself out sparring with a friend yesterday afternoon, but bein' tired snuck up on us way faster and harder than either of us expected, and when I woke up this morning I was a girl and all tangled up naked with the guy I'd spent the night with…" He had to stop to get his heaving gut under control as he thought about it. He risked a glance at Konatsu, but she didn't look condemnatory, as he'd halfway expected her to. "I, uh, I think you can guess what happened when I changed back in the shower."

Konatsu looked lost.

"Oh, gods… Look, when I change back to a guy anything that was in my, uh, girl parts gets spat out, and this morning there was all this gooey white stuff running down my legs in the shower…" Ranma cut himself off before his monologue could devolve into panicked babbling. The gods alone knew how many unfriendly ears would "just happen" to hear it if he did. He risked another glance at Konatsu, and was just in time to see her puzzled expression get replaced by a pale and shocked one.

Before he could say anything else, she turned a sad face to him, and exclaimed, "Oh, gods, Ranma-sama! I'm so sorry. That must have been awful!" She wrapped her arms around him and the next thing he knew, she was crying into his shoulder. "I've thought about it, you know…" she whispered between sobs. "For people like us, it kind of looms in the background, doesn't it?" He twitched and she held him a bit tighter. "I honestly would be a gibbering wreck if it were me in your shoes, so you're doing well that far, at least." She sniffled. "I mean, I was raised in a brothel, even if it was a spectacularly unsuccessful one, so I've always expected I might have to some day — but you always thought of yourself as a boy, right?"

"Yeah." Ranma awkwardly patted her on the back, uncomfortably aware of her as both a pretty girl and a fellow male. Losing himself in his memories with a guilty sense of relief, he stared over her shoulder at the wall of the canal. "I… enjoyed it," he whispered shamefacedly. "I can't imagine ever wanting a guy to touch me 'like that' in the first place, never mind AGAIN, but I liked it! What does that mean?"

Konatsu considered the question for a minute or so before answering, just holding him comfortingly. It wasn't often she got to fill a feminine support role like this, but she couldn't bring herself to feel pleased at the opportunity considering how broken up Ranma sounded. "Well," she began, "It was consensual sex, wasn't it? It'd be kinda weird if you _didn't_ like it, at least a little. How do you feel about the guy you were with? I know you never thought of him 'like that,' but step back a bit. What kind of friend is he? Ignoring the sexual aspect for a moment, do you regret having spent a nice evening with him? Is he likely to brag about it to his friends, or does he respect you enough to be a gentleman?"

Ranma looked a bit shell-shocked at this series of questions. Considering such matters for the first time would have been distressing enough at the best of times; after sleeping with another boy, _Oh gods, I really slept with another GUY!_ it was almost impossible to wrap his brain around.

Konatsu waited patiently, relaxing her hug so she was holding his shoulders from a step or so away and facing him earnestly.

"Well… part of the reason I was so upset is that I'd already worked out he's probably the only guy who WOULDN'T brag about it, unless we count you as a guy." He ignored Konatsu's startled squeak as she let go of his shoulders and stepped back a bit in embarrassment. "I know, you're a girl, but you can't tell me you never thought about it. I know how hot my girl form is." Konatsu's red face told him all he needed to know about her thoughts on the matter. "Relax, you're about the only person who's never been a pervert to me, unless we count the time you put on lipstick and kissed all over my boy side, and I know that was only because you were overcome with gratitude. I trust you."

Konatsu nodded shyly, not trusting herself to speak.

"So, anyway, see, because of that, I almost have to treat it as a lucky break that it wasn't any other guy, or even any other _girl,_ 'coz absolutely EVERYBODY else would either brag about it, or try to kill me, or both! I mean, how screwed up is that?" Ranma tried to remember what else she'd asked him. "I guess he's a nice enough guy to spend time with — he's one of my best friends, in fact — but I never would have considered him a prospect even if I leaned that way, I don't think."

"Ah. I think I see. But… the actual act was… good?" Konatsu was blushing fiercely as she asked this, but she couldn't seem to help herself.

Ranma looked pensive for a moment, as he tried to get a calmer perspective on events. "Well, looking back, it felt really, really good if I don't think about who I did it with." He furrowed his brow in perplexity. He wouldn't have recognized the word even if it bit him on the knee, but that way of looking at events seemed a bit schizoid to him. He sighed.

"What… what was it like?" Konatsu looked at him with wide, eager eyes and a very deep blush.

_The hell—?_ thought Ranma, looking at her in surprise. Then he caught on. _Oh… she sees me as someone safe to have "girl talk" with. Joy._ He grimaced; it was meant to be a smile, but was heavily distorted by his chagrin at understanding the whole subject in the first place. "Tell you what, 'Natsu-chan — if we're doing 'girl talk,' I want to be a girl and in front of a big ice cream sundae when I do it, okay? Besides, talking about doing it with a guy when I am one is just too creepy."

"Sorry!" she squeaked, looking ashamed.

"Aw, don't be upset," he admonished her with a weak and crooked smile. "Let's just take this to someplace with ice cream, where no one knows who I am. See? No problem!" Her answering embarrassed smile made him feel a bit better, for the second time that day. _Didn't even have to hit anyone this time!_ he rejoiced absently as the two jumped lightly back up to street level.

* * *

.

* * *

END PART ONE

_Latest revision as of Thurs. 2010/01/14_


	2. Chapter Two

**A Game Is Fine Too**

A Somewhat Citrus-Flavoured Ranma ½ Fan Fiction  
© 2008–10 by gsteemso

Chapter Two

Not my characters. Ranma ½ belongs to Takahashi Rumiko.

* * *

.

* * *

Ranma, her telltale red hair concealed beneath a dark blue wig in an average-looking cut and wearing a St. Hebereke school uniform, both for purposes of camouflage, walked out of the ice cream parlour and blew a long breath out through the wig's synthetic bangs. She had just had what was undoubtedly one of her strangest conversations with a friend EVER, and considering that she'd had both Akari's sumo pigs and various people with extremely odd Jusenkyo curses to talk about in the past, that was saying something. She looked back through the window, and nodded back at the cheerfully waving Konatsu, before wandering down the street towards the nearest spot she could shed her disguise without being observed.

Konatsu had been so happy for the rare chance to freely indulge in girl talk, particularly of the naughty variety, that Ranma had found herself being more forthcoming than she'd intended with the details of her extended sexplay the previous night with — she shuddered; why had it had to be RYOGA of all people? In any case, she'd found herself recounting what parts felt good and what parts felt amazing, in addition to the expected grumbling about the choice of partner; and Konatsu had been so fascinated that she, Ranma, had found herself actually smiling proudly about the "amazing" parts, as she'd waved her hands evocatively for the wide-eyed ninja.

All in all, now that she'd had some time to assimilate the concept, the idea of having had sex in girl form didn't really seem like that big a deal, somehow. She knew she'd rather do it in guy form, and she still couldn't see herself having any sort of sex with a male again any time short of a full scale invasion by pod people, but she hadn't changed at all inside. She was still a kick-ass martial artist, she was still fundamentally a guy who spent part of his time female, and the fact that she'd discovered a new way to feel good didn't really affect anything important.

She sighed again. That last part was actually kind of depressing; figuring out a way to have sex again would be a great idea, especially if Ranma was a guy at the time, but the only girl she really wanted to be with that way was violently opposed to anything sexual.

Oh well. It had to get better some time, right?

Right?

* * *

Tendo Akane moped in through the front door of the family home, absently calling the usual greeting as she entered. She was very worried about her gender-bending fiancé. What had he gotten mixed up in this time? It must have been pretty strange for him to engage in his disgusting ogling right in front of her like he had in gym class. Normally she had him trained to conceal his perversions better than that.

It should be noted that Akane's perceptions were seldom terribly congruent with reality, at least where her reluctant fiancé was concerned.

She made her way up to her room and flopped on the bed with a _whoosh_ of exhaled breath. "Oh, Ranma…" she mumbled worriedly, losing herself in ever more distressing scenarios.

A couple of rooms down the hall, her middle sister Nabiki worked a telephone, trying to figure out where her favourite cash cow Ranma had disappeared to after school. If there was a new challenger on the scene, she stood to make a good chunk of pocket change once she figured the angles on the situation.

Finally, she struck lucky. "He's _where?"_ She listened in surprise. "All right. Thanks, Natoko. I'll have ¥800 for you next accounting lecture." She hung up and looked into space for a moment.

Ranma was apparently male and walking back towards the Tendo home from the other end of Furinkan district, where no one had seen him doing anything of note. How odd. She shrugged and began calling various fiancées and rivals, yen signs dancing in her mind's eye. It was hardly her fault they could be goaded into making the craziest of leaps of logic with only a slight twist of phrase on her part.

* * *

Mousse of the Amazons was a fairly proud person. In his mind, it was just plain bad luck that he ended up looking stupid so frequently, though an unbiased observer would have to say that his stubborn refusal to wear his cokebottle glasses so often when he really needed to was a strong contributing factor.

At the moment, he was on the warpath. That cad Saotome had STRUCK his beautiful Shampoo! What she saw in the boor he couldn't imagine.

After a close call involving 200 feet of heavy chain tipped with an axe, a policeman wearing his hair in a pigtail, and Mousse not using his glasses, the duck-cursed fool had been forced to concede that hunting his prey would be easier with the aid of semi-accurate eyesight, and had lowered the inch-thick lenses from their accustomed place on his forehead. He was working his way around town in a steadily widening spiral from Furinkan high school outwards, as that had been the womanizing bastard's last known location to anyone who couldn't afford Nabiki's rates for information.

At last! "SAOTOME! YOUR END HAS COME!" Mousse launched a few tons of sharp pointy objects on chains out of his sleeves, not a single blade of which came near his target.

"What crawled up your butt and died?" asked Ranma, skipping easily up to the rooftops and looking curiously back at the Chinese fighter.

"What! You need to ask me that after what you did? DIE!"

"Oh, THAT." Ranma sounded offensively disinterested, and it just made Mousse angrier.

"AAAARGH! Stand still and take your punishment like a good girl!"

Ranma glowered darkly. That was low, even for Mousse.

There was a complicated moment that ended with Mousse swinging by his steel shoe-claws from an overhead street light, tangled hopelessly in a few miles of heavy steel chain that led back into his own sleeves underneath it all.

"Shampoo deserved what she got. Mind your own business, beaky." Ranma smirked as Mousse descended into incoherent frothing at the mouth. Yup, still had it.

Ranma headed home.

* * *

Akane sat up alertly at the sound of Ranma's cheerful greeting as he came through the front door. She was no closer to figuring out why he'd been so upset earlier, but it sounded like it had been a temporary condition. She paused in her bedroom's doorway, hearing the faint tones of her eldest sister, Kasumi, speaking briefly with him. Her eyebrows shot up as she realized he was heading up the stairs towards her in response. She stealthily closed the door again and ghosted over to sit on her bed.

The floor outside her door creaked, and there came a hesitant tapping at about shoulder height.

"Come in?" she called uncertainly.

The door popped open a few inches and Ranma peered cautiously through the gap. "Uh, Kasumi-chan said you were worried about me because of the detention and stuff?"

Akane firmed her resolve, and nodded with a half-smile. "Come in and talk to me?" She knew they had to get better at talking to each other sooner or later, and better to start sooner than later.

Ranma looked surprised, and nodded hesitantly. He came all the way in and shut the door behind himself. "I guess you're wondering about why I hit Shampoo?" he predicted.

Akane nodded, and said, "I know you must have had a reason," — Ranma nodded solemnly — "but it was kind of scary seeing that without knowing what the reason _was._ What did she do, anyway?"

"She tried to be all perverted at me and acted like she could lead me around by doing it, even after all the time she's had to learn about me. She's disgusting!"

Akane sat in stunned disbelief. None of the scenarios she'd constructed to explain the day's events even came close to what Ranma had just told her. "You're seriously telling me she was even more perverted than you? My gods!" She couldn't even begin to imagine it.

Ranma glowered. "Yeah, right. Because we ALL know YOU'RE such a beacon of purity, little Miss 'Hits Me When She Thinks of Something Gross and Then Has the Nerve to Call ME a Pervert.' "

Akane didn't quite know how to respond to that, so she set it aside for later contemplation of revenge. "…How come you never hit her before?"

Ranma blanched. The last thing he wanted to do was tell anyone he'd felt threatened in his masculinity. "…Uhh… I just saw it more clearly than usual, I guess," he ad-libbed desperately.

Akane looked at him suspiciously, but couldn't see any clear excuse to argue. "Aren't you worried about what Cologne will do?"

"Not really. If she thinks I'd be an abusive husband she might decide to go back to China and leave us alone." Left unsaid was that Mousse was no credible threat at all.

"I think she'd be more likely to try and 'fix' you," said Akane dubiously. "You know those Amazons are a bit overly free with the brainwashing."

Ranma looked dismayed. "Didn't think of that," he admitted. Now he was going to be worrying about that for the rest of the week. Wonderful.

Akane rolled her eyes. "Don't worry about it… I'm sure someone will get you unhooked from the Amazons' dog leash before they make you do anything TOO humiliating."

Ranma gulped noisily, and began retreating towards the door. "Gee, thanks…" he muttered despondently.

"Oh, calm down, you big baby. All you have to do is talk to Cologne and threaten to declare a feud against Shampoo unless she acts less slutty towards you. She may have no _self-_control, but that old bat can keep her pretty tightly reined in when it suits her."

Ranma developed a hunted expression. "Do I really have to go that far? I don't want to declare a feud with the kind of idiots who fight to the death for stupid reasons."

Akane blinked in surprise. "I hadn't thought of it like that, but it'll still work even if they find out you don't want to go through with it. As long as it looks like you still _would,_ they'll have to treat your grievance as a serious one."

Ranma looked grim. "I guess you're right. I'd better go take care of that now, while Mousse is still tied up."

"What?"

* * *

Kuno Tatewaki raced silently through the halls of his family home, trying to reach the nearest exit without attracting the attention of—

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, keiki! You think you a-goin' out on the town as a Kuno when you got a haircut like that?"

_Damn!_ he thought, turning to confront one of the banes of his existence, otherwise known to the community at large as his father. He was barely in time to intercept the man's omnipresent hair clippers with his equally omnipresent wooden training sword, as the elder Kuno tried in vain to subject his son to a humiliating buzz cut. The servants fled in terror as the fight raged through the halls, finally ending in a draw at the door to the side yard. "Vile fiend! Look what you've done to my noble blade! How am I supposed to smite that fiend Saotome with a sword like this⁈" He waved the bundle of shredded splinters for emphasis.

"What you got to complain about, boyo? How am I supposed to cut off his pigtail with clippers like these?" The miniature palm tree on Principal Kuno's head shook with emotion as he waved the trashed hair-trimming implements under Tatewaki's nose.

"Hmm. We both desire to see Saotome humiliated. Truce until we succeed?"

"Boy howdy yeah, we do de Father-Son Bonding exercise and trim dat bad keiki's hair but good!"

Eyeing one another suspiciously, they backed off and went to replace their weapons of choice, before meeting inside the front gate to the Kuno compound. Avoiding the trap on the gate, they went forth to smite Saotome Ranma, in the name of Truth, Justice and Questionably Stylish Haircuts.

They made it almost three blocks before simultaneously double-crossing one another.

* * *

Ranma walked down the street. He was, quite without noticing, at the centre of a travelling empty spot on the sidewalks; for he was reviewing out loud what he would say to Cologne, and considering he was juggling phrases like "blood feud" and "personal sex toy," he was being given quite a wide berth by disapproving passersby.

One harried mother tried to tell him off for being crude in public, but he was so caught up in his rehearsals that he didn't even notice.

"Gosh, Mama, is it really OK to throw rocks at people like that? And why did you miss? Awk! What'd I say? MOOOOMMM!"

* * *

Earlier that afternoon, Konatsu had returned to Ucchan's Okonomiyaki and reported that Ranma was just a bit stressed out and would be fine once he had some time to relax. Ukyo would have been more inclined to believe this was a _completely_ accurate account if Konatsu hadn't been all flushed, giggly, and had ice cream on her nose. She was powerless to investigate on her own, though, as the dinner rush was already starting.

* * *

Ranma, surprisingly enough still male, walked in through the front doors of the Cat Café and reflexively dodged both the thrown cleavers from Mousse and the flying glomp-tackle from Shampoo. He did a double take at that last one — didn't she remember being knocked unconscious last time she tried to be overly affectionate? — but it appeared she'd written it off as a freak occurrence, and was not expecting a repeat. "Hi guys, is the old ghoul in?"

"Son-in-Law," greeted a wizened shape on the counter behind the till. "Come to apologize, have you?"

"No," he replied as evenly as he could manage, turning to face her and drawing closer across the room. "I've come to tell you that if Shampoo tries to treat me as her personal sex toy one more time, I will consider myself forced to declare a blood feud against her."

There was sudden dead silence as the three Amazons, as well as all the nearby diners, turned to stare at him. It suddenly occurred to Ranma that doing this during the dinner rush probably wasn't the smartest thing he'd ever done, but it was too late to take the words back now. He tried not to sink too far into the Soul of Ice, knowing that frost on the furniture would give him away, and watched Cologne carefully.

The Elder blinked slowly. "…I beg your pardon?" she asked disbelievingly. She briefly glanced at Shampoo to see if the girl had any idea what this was about, but it was immediately obvious that her great-granddaughter was completely flummoxed. "Oh, for the Ancestors' sake, shut your mouth, girl! Catching flies is unbecoming of an Amazon warrior." She returned her attention to Ranma without waiting for a response, and looked down at him with her most disapproving stare. It was guaranteed to make foolish children soil themselves, at least under normal circumstances.

Apparently these weren't. "Listen, old ghoul, every time Shampoo sees me she tries to get into my pants, and let me tell you, that's damn disturbing when she's in cursed form." He grimaced, and continued, "All I want is to be treated as a person rather than a drooling pervert, OK? I get enough of that crap from Akane." He cocked an eyebrow and waited for a response.

Cologne blinked rapidly, as she assimilated the idea that her great-granddaughter's efforts at courting were apparently a lot less subtle and elegant than the girl had let on.

"I don't know what to say, my boy," she admitted reluctantly. "Do you mean to tell me that she has been behaving like a cheap floozy rather than a sophisticated leader of warriors?"

"Well… yes, honestly. I'd have thought Mousse's whining—"

"HEY!"

"—and what the other fiancées call her would have been clues. Are you telling me she wasn't supposed to be acting like a slut?"

Cologne's left eye twitched, but she held her peace with an admirable degree of restraint. "No, she wasn't. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. You may go now," she grated out. The nearby patrons all looked annoyed as their ramen bowls froze over from the Elder's Soul of Ice.

"Uh, right… Thanks, Granny." Ranma retreated as quickly as dignity would allow, leaving the Amazons to, ah, _debate_ the topic amongst themselves.

* * *

The next day, Ryoga trod steadily through the woods near Tokyo's outer fringes. He had made it as far as the gate to the Unryū family farm when he'd suddenly realized he couldn't face Akari after cheating on her. True, he hadn't wanted to beforehand or afterwards and couldn't understand how the preposterous event had taken place at all, but somehow he didn't think she'd take kindly to hearing about his fantasies about another woman, especially since that woman was another boy part of the time. (He'd twitched faintly.) In the end he had left a letter in the mailbox, explaining that he had some personal issues to work out and didn't want to inflict his presence on Akari until he would make better company, which he hoped shouldn't take too long.

Now that he only had one destination in mind, Ryoga's twisted path was once again closing in on Ranma, not that he really realized it. He just knew that if he walked long enough, he got where he needed to be, even if it wasn't always where he _wanted_ to be.

He wasn't sure WHERE he wanted to be at this moment, but he knew he wanted to see girl-Ranma again. His sensitive wilderness-adapted nose could still faintly smell her intoxicating female musk on the ends of his outer bandanna; it had made an excellent tool for tickling her intimate parts two nights before. The scent was possibly affecting his judgement, he knew, but it seemed as good a goal as any.

* * *

Hours later, Ryoga looked around himself to see if he'd wandered into Nerima ward yet (he thought he was probably in Seoul, which would place him only a few minutes from that nice sunny beach in New Zealand, and perhaps half an hour from the summit of Mount Fuji), and was startled to discover the Tendo Dojo's sign on the wall beside him. "Huh? Did they move the dojo again?" Not expecting anyone to answer the unanswerable — a category into which any question involving geography fell, to Ryoga's way of thinking — he proceeded through the gate in the property wall and knocked on the front door of the house itself. It was answered promptly by someone who'd been foremost in his thoughts all morning. He was rather annoyed that that description was no longer a reference to Akane.

The door slid open, revealing a female Ranma in her Red Army worker's uniform. Her expression closed down as she got a look at who had knocked. "Oh. It's you." She didn't look anywhere near as chipper as she normally did when he bumped into her, which he supposed was hardly surprising.

"Um. Hi?" Ryoga looked awkward for a moment. "Wanna spar?" he asked with a tentative but hopeful smile.

Ranma gave him a long measuring look. Unseen in the house behind her, the three Tendo sisters were observing the encounter with varying degrees of puzzlement — they could feel that something was slightly amiss, but none of them were quite sure what or why.

"Sure, I guess." She absently waved for him to follow her as she turned and went around the house towards the dojo. "Let's use the dojo today, I don't like the looks of those rain clouds. Think you can manage to not destroy the building?" she asked over her shoulder, only half in jest.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," mock-grumbled Ryoga with a small smile. "I'd like to focus on my speed today, for a change… basic speed without special techniques, I mean. How 'bout you, anything particular you've been wanting to practice?"

"Not really. I'm still trying to figure out what's wrong with your Rubber Cloth technique, though… Are you going to keep it as part of your private family style, or can you show me how you're doing it?" As Ryoga might have expected if he'd thought that far ahead, Ranma's demeanour thawed considerably as the conversation moved into the safe and familiar realms of martial arts theory. Without really noticing, she unconsciously weighed the request for speed training and concluded that she was already in the most appropriate body, forgetting her earlier unease at being female near Ryoga with the change of subject.

Following her into the dojo, Ryoga had to think about that one. It was hard to give the question the proper attention in the face of that maddening, wonderful scent he could just catch from the tips of his outer bandanna, to say nothing of Ranma's overwhelming physical presence. _Gods, I could watch her move like that all day…_ he thought happily, before wrenching himself back on topic. "I hadn't really thought about it. I guess I want to keep it part of the Hibiki school, but I don't mind showing YOU if you agree not to teach it to anyone." With an effort, he managed to sound sober rather than maudlin as he said it.

"OK, we can do that later on, after I give you a righteous beatdown," she said cockily, grinning.

"Ha! In your dreams!" Aggression trumped desire in Ryoga's subconscious, and the match was joined.

* * *

Later, after Ryoga had put two holes in the dojo walls trying to hit Ranma, the two sat seiza in the middle of the room and prepared to test the Rubber Cloth technique. Ryoga took off his outer bandanna, realized with a horrified start that if he could still smell it Ranma might also, and stuffed it hurriedly into his pocket.

Ranma gave him a funny look, but subsided as he took off the next bandanna and started to explain the technique. It was more complicated than Ranma had expected, but once she saw the trick, she understood it. After some thought, she asked Ryoga, "did you ever try this against something with its own chi flows, like a tree?"

"No, actually. Never thought of it."

"Hmm. Let me try something…" She reached out and tried to Stretch the sleeve of Ryoga's shirt while it was still on him.

"Hee!" Ryoga acquired a peculiar squint-eyed expression and had trouble sitting still. "That tickles something awful!" It didn't seem to do anything else, though.

Much to both of their surprise, Ranma's pigtail promptly untied itself and her hair wrapped itself tightly around both sides of her head, completely obscuring her vision. Sneezing and spluttering, she hurriedly dropped Ryoga's shirtsleeve and swept her hair out of her face. It came away reluctantly, as though it were charged with static electricity, but without the crackling and sparks. "Okay, that was different," she said disbelievingly.

As Ranma retied her hair, Ryoga had an idea. "I wonder what happens if I try to Stretch something _I'm_ wearing?" he mused, and promptly tried it on his other sleeve. Next to nothing happened; the sleeve got maybe a thumb's width longer. "Damn, that would have been useful," he said, thinking of weighted sleeves and drawing a parallel with Mousse's robe full of chains.

"You tried it on your sleeve? I think that about sums it up — the chi pattern is fiddly enough you can't do it when there's much other chi up against whatever you're trying to stretch."

"Looks like," he agreed, mildly disappointed. "But then why did it work when I used it against the old pervert? He was still holding onto that bra — that's how I got rid of him."

"I think it's because he was only holding on with one hand, and his hands are pretty small. Not much area there for the chi to interact, so it still worked. But it didn't really work when you tried it on me before that — plus it reflects back on you and unties stuff if there's _any_ other chi involved. Bummer, that really limits what you can use it for."

They sat in silence for a moment. Ryoga looked over at her and gathered his courage. "Hey, you've got something on your shirt," he said innocently, pointing.

"Eh?" Ranma craned her head, trying to look at her own neck.

Ryoga moved casually around behind her, reaching for the back of her shoulder where he'd pointed — and, before she knew what was happening, had wrapped his arms around her from behind. One hand wrapped around hers, the fingers intertwined, while the other arm came to rest under her bosom with that hand gently cupping her breast and the thumb perilously close to the pink bit.

She froze in disbelief, her eyes wide. "Hey! What the hell? Ryoga! Are you trying to get us killed?" she hissed in alarm, terrified not so much of what he might be trying to do — which she still had conceptual difficulty applying to herself, even after what she was coming to think of as the Incident At Ryoga's House and all that it implied — as of what would happen if anyone else in the house found her in this kind of position. She knew it wouldn't make any difference that she hadn't asked for it. People always assumed the worst.

"Sshhh," he tried to soothe her, doing his best to ignore the way her startlement was rapidly turning to annoyance. He hurriedly bent his head to nibble gently at a certain spot on the side of her neck, while simultaneously stroking the breast and hand where his own hands were resting, moving his fingers just _so._ He figured it was probably some kind of obscure pressure point combo the two of them had stumbled upon two nights earlier, judging by the results — which were immediate and pronounced.

"Wha—Oooohhh…" Ranma involuntarily melted into his embrace, her mind suddenly a hazy puddle of bliss. Attempting to focus through the blazing trails of ecstasy he continued to draw on her skin, she glared weakly up at the boy behind her. "What do you think you're—? Let go of me! We're both— _ahOHhhh—_ GUYS, dammit! Doesn't that even— _ah-oh-OH!_ —matter to you?" It was all she could do to keep her voice down to avoid advertising her predicament.

"Haven't you ever heard of 'friends with benefits?' " he asked gently, forcing down his nervousness. This was only his old buddy Ranma, after all. He moved his hands abruptly and wiggled his fingertips against her body just _there,_ and she instantly melted again.

"AaAaoooOOoo! You sicko! I'm not gay, okay? I like girls, and you're — _oooOOohhhh_ — not one!"

"Yeah, but you like this too, don't you?" It hadn't escaped his notice that she hadn't actually tried to distance herself yet.

Unfortunately for Ryoga, that was mainly due to shock combined with the jellied nerves that follow a powerful blast of carnal pleasure. "Leave me out of your sick fantasies! Rrragh!" Growling, Ranma twisted like an oyster knife in his arms, landing a strong blow to his chin with the top of her head and popping herself loose. She immediately followed up with a snap kick to Ryoga's groin — which only missed neutering him because her nerves were still jangling violently with aftershocks of pleasure, causing her foot to land almost a quarter handspan off target — and a powerful piledriver to the top of his head, which _didn't_ miss.

The Lost Boy was smashed most of the way through the dojo floor, and Ranma stood before her erstwhile sex partner panting and trembling with righteous feminine fury. The only thing that saved Ryoga's life in that moment was that she couldn't decide on the most painful way to kill him. Not even Sanzenin Mikado, the womanizing creep who'd stolen her first kiss, had made Ranma feel so horribly _wrong,_ and the rage she'd felt after that ghastly incident paled before her volcanic wrath now.

Being harder to damage than the average tank armour thanks to the breaking point training, Ryoga was mostly unfazed, and had only let go of Ranma because he wanted to seduce her rather than molest her. "Come on, it's not like I'm pulling a Kuno on you. I just want us to enjoy ourselves some. Is that so wrong?" he asked earnestly from his vantage point around knee level.

"Would you want to do it as a pig? This ISN'T FUNNY!" she ground out. Some rationality returning as her jangling nerves stabilized, and knowing she wouldn't be able to hurt him as badly as she wanted without a good risk of inflicting fatal damage into the bargain, Ranma kicked him hard in the nose and then forced herself to step back a bit so as to reduce the chance of committing homicide. She felt a bit better at the sight of the damned pig-boy's blood-coated face. She smoothed out her rumpled shirt with quick motions, trying to ignore the yearning moistness at her centre and the tingling of her traitorous nipples as her hands swept down her shirt front. One of the many drawbacks to the Incident At Ryoga's House was that she had gained a whole new set of ways to be pleasurably incapacitated by someone she considered friendly, and what was worse, Ryoga knew every one of them intimately.

Ryoga sighed, reset his broken nose with a grimace, and levered himself out of the splintered floorboards, moving back to give her more space. "I'm not attacking you, Ranma. If you're really not interested, I'll respect that. But look at you! Just a few seconds together, and you had three big o-orgasms—" he choked to a halt, blushing and poking his index fingers together, but forged ahead anyway — "Aren't you happy to find something good about the curse for a change? It beats being a pet pig, even to someone as special as Akane-san, by a country mile! And let me tell you, I've walked a lot of those." It was a marathon speech by Ryoga's standards, and he predictably ran out of inspiration. He fell silent, watching Ranma's murderous expression earnestly. The blood pouring out of his nose had by this point slowed to a trickle.

Ranma clenched her hands in fury, her knuckles popping. The comment about her orgasms had only made her angrier. Her instincts and muscle memory were pulling her in half a dozen viciously pain-dispensing directions at once, which was perhaps the only downside to knowing as many possible attack moves as she did. She glared indecisively at him for a tense, protracted moment — beginning the long process to reclassify him in her mind from "good news: childhood buddy, good for a spar" to "bad news: pervert, maim on sight," a change which the ever forgiving Ranma had great difficulty making permanent, even now — before going briefly unfocussed as an idea struck her. She fixed Ryoga with a malevolent stare and a slow, evil grin, grinding one clenched fist slowly into the opposite palm.

He began to sweat nervously. "R-ranma? What are you thinking?" He was getting very worried — nothing good ever came from someone looking at him like that.

"So you think turning into a girl and becomin' a big, juicy target for every drooling pervert in town is better than turning into a small, juicy lunch special? Well, maybe… I'll grant you that only that stupid Eight-Headed Orochi ever tried to actually eat me. But," she hissed angrily, "we can find out easy enough. I dare you! Take a dip in Instant Spring-of-Drowned-Girl water, and see how much _you_ like losing your self-control and your virginity to another **GUY**. I'm damn sure I could get a sick bastard like Kuno interested in girl-you in a hurry." Ranma was red in the face, and shaking from the effort of keeping her voice down, by the end of her rant.

Ryoga looked shocked. Somehow, when Ranma put it that way, he felt like the lowest of the low for touching her. Just because something felt pleasant didn't mean it felt _right,_ he suddenly realized. No wonder she was angry.

He owed her… He owed _him._ How had he lost sight of the fact that Ranma was a boy inside the sexy girl?

Ryoga's tendency to overreact to things came to the fore once again. He straightened his shoulders, and stoically faced his just desserts square on. "I… You're right, Ranma. I—I—I'll do it. You deserve that much. But I'll tell you right now, we're leaving that stick-waving moron well out of it, OK?"

Ranma looked shocked, and a little horrified. While she was still royally pissed off, what Ryoga was expressing a willingness to do was all but unfathomable to her, and so shocking that she found herself thoroughly sidetracked trying to wrap her mind around it. Ranma was coping with the memory of having willingly had sex with another male largely through her usual method of simply not thinking about it. She had assimilated the experience to the point where it wasn't threatening her self-image any more, but Ryoga's success at putting the moves on her had demonstrated that she couldn't just put it all behind her, as she'd originally intended. (She shuddered briefly in disgust.) And he was _volunteering_ for that kind of psychological scarring?

She abruptly found herself sitting down again, overwhelmed by the magnitude of it. Obviously, Ryoga had no idea what he was walking into. Could she, in good conscience, make him go through with the dare? Then she realized her boxers had gotten soggy in the course of her earlier arousal at Ryoga's hands, something no male should ever experience, and a cold fury bloomed once more. Right, then… "Wait here," she commanded him briskly, standing up. "I'm going to go get some hot water, and then we're going to visit the Old Ghoul for a packet of that stuff. I'm going to hold you to this, got it?"

He gulped, and nodded once, watching her go.

* * *

Ranma, blessedly male again, marched grimly through the doors of the Cat Café, Ryoga trotting uneasily at his heels. Annoyingly, Cologne, Mousse and Shampoo were nowhere to be seen. Ranma approached Shampoo's father at the till and gave a brief courtesy bow. He wished for politeness' sake he could remember the man's name, but the ramen chef was such an irrelevant background figure in Ranma's life that it had escaped him within five minutes of his first hearing it. "Yo, is the old ghoul around? We need to talk to her."

Shampoo's father scowled darkly at him. "I suppose you're proud of my daughter's loss of face? They've gone to the mountains for six weeks of extreme and intensive retraining. The Elder was _very upset._ Now my brother, my nephew and I are stuck doing the work of six people to run this restaurant, and I've been given impossible sales goals for the duration. I'm quite upset myself, if you hadn't guessed. So, tell me, why would any of us here want to help you with anything? If it were up to me Shampoo would follow through with the Kiss of Death rather than that of Marriage. You're not good enough for her."

Ranma blinked. The fact that he was still simmering with anger helped him to ignore the insult in favour of his original objective. "All we need is a packet of Instant Jusenkyo powder. We can pay for it if we have to. I know you have Spring-of-Drowned-Girl packets — Shampoo was bugging me in human form in the rain last weekend. Will you please let us have one?"

"You already turn into a girl. What good would a packet of that stuff do you?"

"That dumbass—" Ranma indicated the uneasy figure of the Lost Boy loitering in the entryway of the café — "keeps trying to tell me that turning into a girl and getting hit on by other guys isn't that bad of a curse. I want to make him eat his words."

Shampoo's father considered that for a moment, though he continued to frown at them. "You want to settle once and for all whether being a girl or being a pig is worse. I see." Ryoga looked mortified that this nonentity of a man knew about his Jusenkyo curse. "We don't have any instant Spring-of-Drowned-Piglet for you to try, but you're correct, we do have a few girl-water packets. My better judgement says I should send you away empty-handed until you pay off all those free meals my daughter keeps giving you, but I have to admit I'm morbidly curious as to the results. All right. Wait here. Don't touch anything." He disappeared up the back stairs to the living area. Sounds of distant rummaging ensued.

Ryoga looked glumly at Ranma. Yep, he was still pissed off. Best not to say anything.

Ranma stared grimly at the curtained doorway Shampoo's father had disappeared through. The sooner he was out of this vipers' nest masquerading as an eatery, the happier he would be. Making a female Ryoga suffer the indignity of being ogled and groped by horny male teenagers in downtown Nerima, and maybe on the subway for good measure, would be just what the doctor ordered. He'd have to stick her into a Playboy bunny suit or a bikini or something, on a crowded sidewalk of course, while they were at it. Too bad the beach was so far away. Some of those buff types who thought they were the gods' gift to teenage girls tended to collect on beaches, as though sun-drenched sandy expanses by the sea were some sort of cosmic lint trap for humans. Those assholes would be the perfect antidote to Ryoga's cavalier attitude towards involuntary girlhood. With his boxers still a bit femininely damp and starting to chafe, Ranma was in no mood for letting the Lost Boy off with half measures.

Finally, Shampoo's father came back, bearing a single small packet in one hand. "My daughter must have taken the box of these with her to train, but fortunately for you, she missed one. That will be ten thousand yen, please."

Ryoga grimaced, but forked over the cash. It took most of his savings from the past month. Ranma snatched up the profferred sachet, spun on his heel, and led the way out with impolite haste.

Ryoga considered that Ranma had better prepare the drowned-girl water soon or he was going to lose his nerve. He still didn't see how it could be all THAT bad, but Ranma's malevolent cackling was beginning to get on his nerves.

* * *

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* * *

END PART TWO

_Latest revision as of Thurs. 2010/01/14_


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